


Matt's Missing

by Aysu



Series: EBF Collection [8]
Category: Epic Battle Fantasy (Matt Roszak Video Games)
Genre: Humor, Lance has a hangover, Language, Mentions of alcohol, and Matt's an idiot, but it isn't malicious, but natalie is loud, except for the kidnapping, matt the world's most dangerous kidnappee, probably should mention the kidnapping, somebody stop my tagging hand, you can pry Lance's gunblade from my cold dead fingers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27604765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aysu/pseuds/Aysu
Summary: And all Lance wanted was to sleep in for once.
Series: EBF Collection [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015827
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Matt's Missing

"Matt's missing." 

Lance rolled over with a groan and blearily peered at the fuzzy orange blur in the doorway. A crack of sunlight filtered past the edge of the cheap curtains, keeping most of the room in shadow, but still bright enough that his tired eyes burned. It didn’t help that he was slightly hungover from the night before, and had been planning on sleeping in for a few extra hours. The light made his head hurt, which only served to wake him up faster, and he worked his mouth a few times before pulling the blanket over his head. 

Better, if only slightly. 

"Matt’s a big boy. He can handle himself," he mumbled. 

"Lance, he never slept in his bed last night," Natalie insisted slightly louder. 

Lance scowled under the sheet as he listened to Natalie all but stomp to the window to yank the curtain back with a scraping clatter. Why, oh why, he sourly wondered, did she have to be so  loud ? Then the blanket was jerked away from him, leaving him to the sunlight’s unforgiving mercy, and he wondered if he could get away with killing her now that they’d been friends for a few years. Surely her guard had dropped by now? 

" Lance! " 

"For fuck's sake, woman, throw a heal spell before you yell at a sleeping man after a night of drinking," Lance grumbled as he sat up with his hand rubbing over his eyes. 

To his surprise, she actually alleviated the headache when, usually, such immediate care was reserved for Matt. He grudgingly rescinded his tentative plans of murdering her on the road. His hand dropped and he blinked a few times at the irate woman standing over him. 

"You’re not asleep," Natalie pointed out archly. 

"Not anymore, no," Lance growled. He rolled to his feet with a yawn and grabbed his shirt from where he'd tossed it the night before. Once the white tank was covering his chest he sat back down and ran his fingers through his hair. "Why bug me if Matt's run off on a fool's quest again? Anna's the one who tracks shit." 

"It rained really hard overnight and washed away the tracks, and you were the last person to talk to Matt after dinner." 

Lance rolled his eyes and ran his fuzzy-feeling tongue across his teeth. First order of business was getting some water to rinse his mouth, he idly thought, then maybe some food. Dealing with Natalie's worries over her 'not'-boyfriend running ahead of them again could definitely be placed further down the morning to-do list. It wasn’t like it was the first—or the fifteenth—time that Matt had heard some crazy rumor of treasure while at a tavern and launched out after it without a word to his team. 

"...Are you even listening to me?" 

The snapped words had Lance blinking back to the present and he fixed Natalie with a bland look. "Do I  look like I was listening?" He cut across Natalie's reply, heading off her yells in favor of placating her enough to get on with his morning. "Have you talked to the desk people about what he did last night?" 

Natalie's lips pursed, and her eyes definitely told him she knew what he was doing. "He was drinking with a group of travelers—the ones who'd approached him during dinner, remember?—and they left just before midnight. Matt was with them, but he was apparently pretty drunk and needed support out the door. Anna's still down there getting more details." 

Lance blinked twice before those words sank in. "Matt doesn’t get drunk enough to need support," he noted softly. 

"See why I’m worried? Now if you could  please show a little hustle in getting ready..." 

"Well it’s not like it’s unusual for Matt to disappear on us overnight," Lance retorted. His words were muffled as he began tugging his armor and boots on and threw all the crap he'd left out the night before back into his adventure pouch. He stood straight and brushed past Natalie on his way to the door. "Gods, what is wrong with you? You should have opened up with, 'Hey, Matt’s been drugged and carried off,' instead of, 'Matt's missing.'" 

Natalie flushed slightly, recognizing Lance's point, and mumbled, "Excuse me for being a little freaked and not thinking clearly. I never thought a six-foot warrior  could be at risk of being kidnapped." 

Lance snorted as they turned down the stairs and into the dining area. "Touché; I probably wouldn’t have believed you even if you had opened up with that. What's the word, Anna?" 

The ranger cast a brief look over her shoulder before she bid farewell to the desk person and turned to them. She was already geared for travel, and tossed a cloth wrapped bundle to Lance, who caught it in one hand. The smell of eggs, bread, and bacon wafted up, and his stomach growled appreciatively at the gesture of forethought as he unwrapped the breakfast sandwich to scarf it down. 

"Not a lot to go on. Matt was at their table for a little over an hour, and there were no signs of issues. Nobody thought anything odd of it when he left with them," Anna reported tersely. She glanced at the table where she recalled seeing the group the night before and her brow furrowed. "All the workers thought it only made sense that Matt had been staggering around—he'd been drinking for hours, after all." 

"And they wouldn’t know his insane tolerance," Natalie finished heavily. "Did you get any leads on where they might have taken him?" 

"Other than that they have a wagon and horses, no," Anna admitted. She pushed out the door and involuntarily shuddered at the icy wind that was blowing past. 

Lance sucked a bit of grease off his fingers before wiping them on the napkin and shoving it away. "Horses and a wagon imply they came from someplace relatively far away. I doubt they came here specifically to kidnap the dolt, anyway. We should check at the general store, see if they know anything about the group, what supplies they picked up, or maybe even where they were headed." 

"What makes you think they  didn’t come here specifically to kidnap Matt?" Natalie demanded. "I mean, they waited until we’d all gone to bed, spiked his drink, and carried him off!" 

"Because the team is such a creature of habit," Lance replied quietly. "We always split up before the winter snows hit, which is only a couple months away—everyone knows it, too. Why risk crossing all of us when they could have waited and got him alone, guaranteed? And they made off with him in a very public place. No, this reeks of an amateur attempt. Matt must’ve said or done something to make himself seem valuable." 

Silence fell between them as they hurried out to the main road, dodging muddy puddles and people just starting their days. Drain water rushed along cobblestone gutters towards the river, which could be heard roaring even over the sound of bakers shouting their wares. The sky above was filled with fluffy clouds that belied how stormy it had been the night before. 

"Maybe they’re holding him hostage, or want a ransom from us?" Anna suggested after a while. 

"I’m not paying to get Matt out of his own damn mess," Lance muttered sourly. "If he’s dumb and weak enough to get held hostage when I want to sleep in, then he deserves it." 

"You want to live to see tomorrow?" Natalie growled irritably. 

Anna turned to hide her smile when Lance purposefully stomped in a puddle to send mud splattering across the hem of Natalie's dress. The animosity between the two never seemed to change, even though both knew they would guard the other to the death if it came down to it. But, she mused as she nudged herself between the pair, it was going to get out of hand, and they had more important things to do. 

OOOOOO

When Matt woke, tiny mammoths were jumping inside his skull, he was sure of it. And because of them, his pillow felt like a wood floor, rather than cheap, lumpy fluff, like inn pillows usually felt like. It had been years since he’d truly had a hangover, and while the memories of the night before were pretty fuzzy, he didn’t think he’d drunk  that much—certainly not so much of the cheap inn ale that he’d be  this hungover. 

A sudden bump that shook the whole room sent his whole body jolting, and his eyes snapped open only for him to squeeze them shut again with a hiss. Too bright, too sudden, the mammoths in his head cheerfully scolded. Properly warned, he was careful to only slit his eyes open on the second try, only to blink in confusion when he saw bags, and rolls, and barrels lashed down. And he wasn’t in a bed, he was lying on a wood floor. And it was moving. 

Adrenalin and alarm gave him the ability to sit up and open his eyes fully. Nausea and pain reminded him why that had been a terrible decision, and he found himself staggering for the back of the wagon to throw up. Already, his headache was rapidly fading, and while he was sure Natalie could, for the millionth time, give him the magical theory behind why that always happened, he could only be glad the phenomenon still worked on what he was becoming more and more certain wasn’t a simple hangover, because he sure as hell wasn't at the inn. He didn’t even recognize the grassland surrounding the wagon train carrying him off. 

"What the fuck?" Matt barked as he leapt from the still-moving wagon. He staggered some on the landing, and smoothly turned the stumble into a roll out of the way of the horses pulling the wagon trailing his. 

A shout rose up, followed by several more, calls for stops, for him to wait, and that they could explain. Matt was fairly certain they couldn’t explain, and he was fairly certain he didn’t care what crackpot story they’d try to feed him ended up being. His hand flew for his sword as he found his feet, only to belatedly realize that it missing, as was his adventure pouch. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised—who left the kidnapped's weapons on the kidnapped? Well, unfortunately for them, though it was certainly faster to simply draw a sword from its sheath on his person, and only slightly slower to retrieve one from his adventure pouch, Natalie had trained him to summon his favorite weapon from anywhere. 

It took a few seconds to draw up and focus his mana, especially in the half-panicked rush of attempting escape, but sure enough, the flash of light heralding a summon appeared. And instantly, Matt knew he’d screwed  something up. Instead of Heaven's Gate appearing in his hands, an enormous pile of every single one of his weapons clattered into appearance before him. 

Both he and his kidnappers—who were unarmed, he idly noted—froze in surprise. There were weapons in that stack that he’d forgotten he had, like the red and gold spear, and the twin pair of katanas he’d used back when he and Natalie had first struck out together. And there, just peeking out from behind a green and maroon war hammer, was a black trident still gooey with the remains of a slime he’d never bothered to clear off after using the weapon for a day, since it had been funny to listen to Natalie complain, and the slimes had quit bothering him while he was using it. And... And was that... Lance's gunblade? 

Suddenly, being carted off by strangers didn’t sound like such a bad deal. Lance was going to kill him when he found out why his beloved weapon had vanished—and that discovery was likely happening right now, somewhere else. 

"Tell you what," Matt bargained quickly, "Give me my adventure pouch back and tell me what you want, and I'll go wherever you're taking me. Can’t be worse than what’s waiting for me back home now, in any case." 

The people shuffled about in confused surprise, but quickly turned over the bag with a promise of an explanation that evening, and watched in awe as Matt rapidly and haphazardly shoved a thousand different implements of death into it, leaving just his trademark sword out to sling across his back. And when it looked like he was fleeing into the wagon he’d escaped from, and rapidly restacked a few barrels between himself and the entrance, they wrote it off as a strange, but unimportant curiosity.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fond of this one, so I'll probably use it as an intro to a longer story eventually.


End file.
